Data Center, Enterprise, and Industrial Automation environments often include a collection of computers and other devices such as switches, routers, and Programmable Logical Controllers (PLCs). These devices are typically interconnected via cabling and wireless mechanisms allowing communication therebetween. As a whole, this collection of devices, its interconnections, and its communication mechanisms is referred to as a network. Communications protocols define the rules and data formats that govern the exchange of information on a computer network. Well-known communication protocols include Ethernet and internet protocol (IP) suite. IP addressing is a way for a device to have an identity on the network, and to send and receive messages across the network.
Network managers often desire to gather information about network devices reactively, and proactively control and change the logical and physical infrastructure environments. Network managers utilize a variety of software tools to detect, identify and collect information regarding the devices on their networks. Typically, managers run discovery tools first to identify devices connected to the network. Based on the obtained discovery information, managers run other tools that monitor and control the previously discovered devices. These tools usually work with predefined sets of one or more system management protocols, such as SNMP, WBEM (which can include, but is not limited to, CIM-XML), CIP, IPMI, etc., and don't allow dynamic addition of new protocols without refactoring algorithms.
In order to monitor and manage devices or to process alerts received from devices, known network management systems statically associate a device with a respective management protocol in advance. These systems are not capable of monitoring or managing a new device added to a network without preliminarily running a separate discovery process. The same is true when processing alerts received from a newly added device. The systems fail to process the alerts without knowing a device management protocol in advance.
Thus, there is a need for improved infrastructure management systems.